OCTF seminar followed by drinks – all welcome
São Paulo’s rich native biodiversity is threatened by changes in land cover and fragmentation. This prompted scientists in 1999 to found the Virtual Institute of Biodiversity, BIOTA-FAPESP. FAPESP, the State of São Paulo Research Foundation, is a nonpolitical, taxpayer-funded foundation, one of the main funding agencies for scientific and technological research in Brazil, and a supporter of this program. The program’s scope of research ranges from DNA bar-coding to landscape ecology and includes taxonomy, phylogeny, and phylogeography, as well as human dimensions of biodiversity conservation, restoration, and sustainable use.
In this talk we will discuss what makes a research program on biodiversity conservation simultaneously successful in research, training, and policy, as well as how the program managed to renew FAPESP’s support until 2020, the progress made by the Program in the last years, and future perspectives.
Prof Carlos Joly is a Full Professor of Plant Ecology at the Department of Plant Biology of the State University of Campinas/UNICAMP, fellow of the Brazilian Academy of Science, Member of the Multidisciplinary Expert Panel/MEP of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services/IPBES. As the main mentor of the BIOTA-FAPESP Program (www.biota.org.br), he was in charge of planning, designing and implementing it from 1996 to 2004, having been reappointed Chairman of the Program since 2007.
At UNICAMP he has been the chair of 3 graduate programs (Ecology, Plant Biology and Environment and Society), twice Head of the Plant Biology Department (1987/89; 2006/10) and Dean of the Graduate School (1996/98). His experience in government includes the State of São Paulo Secretary of Environment (1995) and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (2011/2012).
Due to his achievements he received the Henry Ford Prize twice (1999 and 2009), the Scientific Merit Medal awarded by the Brazilian government (2002) and the Muriqui Prize awarded by the Atlantic Forest Biosphere Reserve (2012). Currently he is the coordinator of two large research projects – LTER/BIOTA Functional Gradient of the Atlantic Forest, supported by CNPq and FAPESP, and the ECOFOR funded by NERC/UK and FAPESP.
